ANAHEIM, Calif.  Xavier Thames was dribbling when the buzzer sounded. He just stopped and walked slowly to the bench, head down, heart throbbing. Behind him, the ball rolled to a stop and just lay there at midcourt.

The ball was still inflated. Thames and his San Diego State teammates were not.

They shuffled through the handshake line, staggered off the court, ambled to the post-game interview room, pausing several times to pull up their jerseys and wipe away tears. The season that wasn’t supposed to last this long had ended, 70-64 to Arizona in the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 at Anaheim’s Honda Center.

That they finished 31-5, that they won two games in the tournament, that they won the regular-season Mountain West title, that they won the Wooden Legacy and knocked off Kansas at Kansas – none of it expected four months ago – was no solace in the carnage of a losing locker room.

“You want to win your last game,” JJ O’Brien said quietly. “When you don’t, it’s hard to look back and appreciate the season right away.”

“We’ve played 37 games now,” Miller said. “That was the most physical, hard-fought game of the season for us.”

And indeed, the Aztecs checked off most boxes on the game plan to beat a No. 1 seed, correcting many of the mistakes from the loss at Viejas Arena in November, outrebounding them, getting their bigs in foul trouble, holding Pac-12 player of the year Nick Johnson without a point for 36½ minutes, leading by eight in the first half and again early in the second.

In the end, the result was the same. Only the score was different; lost by nine in November, lost by six in March.

“Everybody played hard,” Winston Shepard said. “Everybody always plays hard. We gave it our all … But we don’t care about morale victories.”

It was SDSU’s second trip to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament at Anaheim’s Honda Center, and second loss. Instead, Arizona (33-4) advances to play here Saturday against second-seeded Wisconsin, a 69-52 winner over Baylor in the night’s first game. The winner goes to the Final Four in Dallas.

The Sweet 16 loss here three years ago is remembered for Jamaal Franklin’s technical foul that swayed the momentum in Connecticut’s favor. Thursday night, it was a two-minute sequence late in the game that will haunt the Aztecs.

It started with a Wildcats timeout with 4:23 to go, after the Aztecs had sprung their 1-3-1 zone defense for the first time. Miller drew up a play for the zone, only for the Aztecs to switch back to man-to-man.

The Wildcats calmly recognized the change and ran a set play that got Gabe York an open 3 from the left side, which he missed. Offensive rebound: Aaron Gordon. York got loose in the lane and shot again, and missed. Offensive rebound: Gordon. But they didn’t miss a third time, 7-foot center Kaleb Tarczewski scoring inside off a nice feed from Gordon.

“That, to me, was a huge turning point,” Miller said. “It gave us confidence that the game was going in our direction.”

The Aztecs went to the other end and Shepard (11 points, four turnovers) tried a dribble handoff to Xavier Thames near midcourt.

Back-track for a moment: Late in the first half, Shepard was whistled for an offensive foul for sticking his hip out on a dribble handoff. That kind of foul makes you tentative the next time, and Shepard was reluctant to protect the ball by sticking out his hip when Thames came to retrieve it from him.

Arizona guard T.J. McConnell, shadowing Thames all night, somehow squeezed between them and poke it away.

That ignited one of Arizona’s vaunted fast breaks that resulted in a layup by Johnson – his first points of the game after a 0 of 10 start. Suddenly unshackled, Johnson drained a 3 on the next possession against SDSU’s 1-3-1 zone – 56-51, Cats, 2:23 left.

Johnson: “These guys gave me great confidence to keep on shooting the ball, and that’s what I did … When I hit one shot, it just started to feel a little bit better.”

SDSU coach Steve Fisher: “Good players do that. Good players stay with it – next play – and he did that to us tonight.”

The Aztecs made the Wildcats work for it, though, scoring multiple times in the closing minutes and then fouling. Statistically one of the nation’s worst free-throw shooting teams at 65.5 percent, Arizona went 11 of 12 down the stretch to clinch it.

Johnson finished with 15 points, all in the final 2:44 and 10 coming from the line. Gordon and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson also had 15.

Thames led the Aztecs with 25 points on 9-of-22 shooting. Dwayne Polee II had 13 points, and Josh Davis had six points and 14 rebounds (11 in the first half).

The Aztecs had one offensive rebound in the entire first half of the first game, and seven in the first four minutes Thursday. They outrebounded Arizona 24-14 in the half and held it to 37 percent shooting.

But then they started to tire, and Arizona started to make shots, and the Aztecs suddenly stopped.

SDSU: seven minutes without a basket.

Arizona: 13-of-21 shooting in the second half, or 61.9 percent.

“In the second half, our defense just wasn’t the same,” O’Brien said. “I feel like if we kept up our defense, we would have been able to beat them. But they made adjustments at halftime. They did a good job.”